Peiying Liu1, Carolyn Sacco2, Yan Fang2, Carol Tamminga2, Hanzhang Lu1
1Advanced Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States; 2Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States
The power of fMRI in assessing neural activity and detecting group differences are often hampered by variations in fMRI responses across individuals. Normalization of fMRI signals with basal physiologic parameters may be useful in reducing variations and improving sensitivity, but this utility hasnt been tested in patient populations. The present work extends previous findings in healthy controls, and showed a modulation effect of baseline venous oxygenation on fMRI signals in Schizophrenia patients. The results demonstrated that, by accounting for basal physiologic parameters, the sensitivity of fMRI in differentiating patient population from healthy controls can be enhanced with relatively little cost.